MSN Messenger Editor's Review

One of the best known instant messengers worldwide, Microsoft's MSN Messenger comes with a complete set of options such as direct links to your e-mail Inbox, MSN home page, and address book.

MSN Messenger includes video and voice conversation options as well as animated winks, shared search, photo swap between you and your friends or a personal music message which displays the track you are listening to while communicating with friends.

There is also a range of funny online games that can be played by two or more peers. Some exciting features of MSN Messenger are the Whiteboard, Remote Assistance and Application Sharing. These features, only available with MSN Messenger give chatters the opportunity to share data or be part in a remote assistance session with partial or complete control of the target workstation.

In version 7.5 you can record a short voice message (up to 15 seconds) that can be played by your peer; you can add an animated graphic as your conversation backgrounds.

There are currently two built-in backgrounds available for you to use, one is swimming fish and the other is ticking clocks. You can also share your animated backgrounds if you enable the "Share background" option. Dynamic Display Pictures will change emotions based on the emoticons you send.

Pluses: Friendly and easy to use interface and a lot of communication features along with a lot of improvements which make chatting more fun.

Drawbacks / flaws: Cannot send messages to friends while they are offline, less options for the integrated voice and video communication channels than in Yahoo Messenger. Recommended for those users who aren't necessarily chatting addicted.

In conclusion: Both fun and useful. Download, install, sit back, and enjoy.

version reviewed: 7.5 build 0322

MSN Messenger has been discontinued by Microsoft Corp. Actually, it has been turned into Windows Live Messenger.